rass had
grown under the trees, making a green carpet, and the grove at the
bottom was delightfully pretty with its little winding paths, separated
by leafy walls, running in and out.

Jeanne was startled by a hare springing suddenly across their path; it
ran down the slope and made off towards the cliff, among the rushes.

After breakfast, Madame Adelaide went to lie down as she had not yet
recovered from the fatigue of the journey, and the baron proposed that
he and Jeanne should walk to Yport. They set off, going through the
hamlet of Etouvent in which was situated Les Peuples, and three peasants
saluted them as if they had known them all their lives.

They entered the sloping woods which go right down to the sea, and soon
the village of Yport came in sight. The women, sitting at their doors
mending clothes, looked up as they passed. There was a strong smell of
brine in the steep street with the gutter in the middle and the heaps of
rubbish lying before the doors. The brown nets to which a few shining
shells, looking like fragments of silver, had clung, were drying before
the doors of huts whence came the odors of several families living in
the same room, and a few pigeons were looking for food at the side of
the gutter. To Jeanne it was all as new and curious as a scene at a
theater.

Turning a sharp corner, they suddenly came upon the smooth opaque blue
sea, and opposite the beach they stopped to look around.

Boats, with sails looking like the wings of white birds, were in the
offing; to the right and left rose the high cliffs; a sort of cape
interrupted the view on one side, while on the other the coast-line
stretched out till it could no longer be distinguished, and a harbor and
some houses could be seen in a bay a little way off. Tiny waves fringing
the sea with foam, broke on the beach with a faint noise, and some
Normandy boats, hauled up on the shingle, lay on their sides with the
sun shining on their tarred planks; a few fishermen were getting them
ready to go out with the evening tide.

A sailor came up with some fish to sell, and Jeanne bought a brill that
she insisted on carrying home herself. Then the man offered his services
if ever they wanted to go sailing, telling them his name, "Lastique,
Josephin Lastique," over and over again so that they should not forget
it. The baron promised to remember him, and then they started to go back
to the chateau.

As the large fish was too heavy for Jeanne,